Bab 6: The Value of Experience
I woke up the next morning with a minor hangover but otherwise well rested, which was abnormal for a 16 year old boy who just recovered from a night of drinking hard liquor. without a constitution equal to that of two grown men alcohol poisoning would have been well within the realm of possibility considering the strength of the rum. Getting out of bed, I still felt refreshed despite being hung over. I concluded getting ready for my first real day in the strange new world i inhabit by making a breakfast of beef jerky with boiled river water,and checking my equipment to make sure everything is order before gearing up.
I decide on packing up my camping gear as opposed to leaving it out in the open. I also decide on pulling out the the barrel of black from the systems storage to fill my powder horn and I load up my shot pouch while I'm at it since the storage can only be used after a delay between each use. I decide to purchase some sound differentiating shooters muffs for an expensive 100 essence, they were worth the price though without them the hearing loss could prove to be a detriment in the future, the muffs were hardy, comfortable, and surprisingly I was able to wear them under the tricorne without and issue. The muffs were entirely magical with runes to enhance sounds under a certain level , and reduce sounds over a certain level to a predetermined decibel range.
heading out into the forest I saw the notification Icon appear. In the system menu there was a new side quest
Hunting
type : side quest (time limited, repeating)
completion condition: Hunt and skin any beast
Failure condition: 2 weeks pass
reward: blood rune extraction tool, appropriate Items fabricated from the beast materials free of charge, 500 essence
Hunting was harder than I expected, animals in the area were scarce and easily startled. Even with skill assimilation and all of the familiarity with the skills that came from it when it came to real world application I lacked experience It doesn't matter how well you understand stealth skills if you step on every dried twig or you fail to properly cover up your sent, Having a complete understanding of the skills and all relevant knowledge and muscle memory was fine and all, but a lack of experience results in a complete failure to use the skills effectively.
With the mornings hunting session being a failure I had a lunch consisting of dried sausage. The sausage had an outstanding balance of spices in the meat it was flavorful without being overpowering but it felt as if it was missing something as if the final ingredient had yet to be added.
the afternoon was spent familiarizing myself with skills, even if the muscle memory and relevant knowledge was imprinted, I had no actual experience using the skills themselves. over the course of the afternoon and the next morning I familiarized myself with the skills I had and could use them with some proficiency.
The mystic eyes of death perception, hemomancy imprint, body control, and blood flesh conversion could be considered innate abilities. using them was easy almost to the point of it being an unconscious action after a little practice I was able to thoroughly grasp these three skills.
mystic eyes was the least difficult skill to use it I needed to focus on "seeing" the lines and points that separate "life" and "death" but it would be more accurate to say these lines are connections to the laws of both the plane and the world the lines have different tensile strength based on what they represent for example life is a very easy line to distinguish and to sever if something is inanimate, dead, or near death and it often results in the object breaking or splitting along the line cut. This cut will do through the object or entity entirely and as long as the line is cut the density and strength of the object is irrelevant a fruit knife could destroy a tank as long as the line can be reached and severed, points are differ from lines in a few ways, destroying the life point of an object can cause it to crumble or even explode depending on the amount of force used, and points do not move as opposed to the lines that flow inside or around an object, and lastly the points only exist internally. life is a milky white color and presently the only one I am able to see consistently I sometimes catch glimpses of other colors but only briefly.
The imprint from hemomancy feels very similar to breathing as it circulates I can speed it up and slow it down, increase or decrease the oxygen absorption, and control heart rate to be explosively fast or to reach a slowness that makes faking my death a possibility.
body control was the most difficult of the three and the easiest one at the same time having complete control of the body is a massive benefit but it can also cause problems , its not always efficient to use the extreme amount of control the skill affords and it requires a lot of experimentation to eliminate the wasted movement created by the newfound sensitivity. In the end I spent a whopping 800 points on a bio-mechanics primer leaving me with a little over 500 essence, the primer worked wonders, after another painful integration session and a few hours of practice I was able to remove most of my wasted movements, increase my speed and conserve an incredible amount of stamina by eliminating a large number of unnecessary micro muscular movements.
On my second day I began polishing my gun kata and marksmanship I ended up using all of my ammunition that morning and had to purchase more bullets and wadding eating up most of my remaining essence and leaving my with only 83 essence by the time I was comfortable with the basic movements and forms It took thousands of rounds to get to even that point and scared away any animals that might have stayed in my general area otherwise. over the course of familiarizing my self with the gun kata I also managed to train my stealth skill in the clouds of soot and smoke that the flintlocks produced, given the slow reload and limited shots of the flintlocks I decided that they should be used as a tool to disengage rather than just weapons for direct combat, I had yet to master recoil syncro but I had at least learned to use the force a flintlocks recoil to give me a faster reaction on grabbing the next for follow up shots.
on the fifth day I began training the knife-work and stealth skills to a decent level within a day unlike the guns I had to practice accuracy and the fact that flintlocks need constant reloading.
on the sixth day I decided that a change of scenery was needed after all It would be impossible to complete my mission having scared the wildlife away I could go deeper into the forest but that carried risks that I wasn't willing to take. After consulting with the system I decided heading to a nearby large city and registering with the guild was the best option If i went to a city not only will most of the more dangerous beasts have been wiped out but I could earn money for hunting the smaller ones.
After making my decision, I began to move through the trees and forest undergrowth along the road towards the coast honing the movement and parkour skills from the gun kata and adapting them to the forest, I was also training my stealth skills as well while traveling any passerby would likely think it was just a breeze passing through. During breaks I experimented with the blood dart magic a few times, its power was lacking and it didn't seem capable of killing with the shallow wounds left, based on the description I came to the conclusion that it was probably created as a method for delivering poisons into the targets body. it took 2 days of travel at top speed to reach the large port city of Muscheln
It's somewhere Alexander had wanted to go after all what country boy doesn't want to explore the big city but never went, in fact he likely would have gone if the practice of going there during the coming of age had not been expressly forbidden, after all the city is easily one of the most dangerous places for a sheltered village boy. If not for his homecoming it could be said that he got off lightly with the scamming he received, in fact allowing these sorts of things to happen or even commissioning rouges to act during the ceremony was common practice for the villagers, in addition to the hiring fee anything stolen was theirs to keep.
The old man sutri Alexander encountered was probably hired even if the older rouges were known to harass the younger generation it's pretty rare for them to be that persistent. With the village wiped out the probability of finding out who hired sutri to teach Alexander the so called "value of experience" is pretty low and its not worth investigating when I have other priorities.
with the last of my essence I purchased a hooded cloak, some weathered copper coins and a small flask of alcohol from the system I headed towards the city that would likely be my home in the coming months.
Status Power Mingguan
-- Peringkat
Power 
-- Power
stone